The Missouri Senior Who It Turns Out Wasn't Missing At All

I started seeing pictures of 91-year-old Anna Marie Van Alst on a few Facebook pages I follow yesterday, Thursday, January 5, 2022. People were looking for her because she was missing, a police report had been filed, and a Silver Alert was issued for the woman. It turns out though the woman was pretty easy to find.

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She was "found" at a known address by Sean McDowell from Fox 4 Kansas City according to a post on his Facebook page after being assigned to report on her story. The story may have piqued the interest of the television station because she had been missing since September and suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Yet a missing person report wasn't filed until yesterday.

When McDowell went to the door at the known address, Van Alst's daughter answered the door and told McDowell her mother was right there and offered to show her to him. Today McDowell posted a picture of himself with Van Alst on his Facebook page.

Turns out there's a little bit of family drama that fleshes out the story. Estranged family members filed a police report in a fight over money.

McDowell took the time in his Facebook post to make sure folks knew he wasn't making fun of the police with his post. He explained that the police are short-staffed and that missing senior citizen cases, and police work, in general, is difficult. So he understood how the cops missed it.

I agree, to an extent, yet I'd like to think that when someone reports another person as missing the police might check known addresses before issuing a Silver Alert and sounding the alarm that someone's missing. It seems like a fairly straightforward thing to check right off the bat if you ask me.

The most important thing. Van Alst has been "found" and is safe with her family.